And Germany gets nuked.Longer war. HUGE numbers more dead including American and British (and Germans) but MANY more dead Russians.
Nazis still lose
And Germany gets nuked.Longer war. HUGE numbers more dead including American and British (and Germans) but MANY more dead Russians.
Nazis still lose
Several people have suggested that Stalin could have arranged a ceasefire with Hitler, but there was approximately zero chance for that. Hitler was not going to give up on the aim of his life - a German Lebensraum up to the Urals - when he thought he was winning. Without Lend-Lease he'll be even more convinced.
The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.Well, the point might be that a ceasefire might be brokered when the soviets turned the tide, but couldn't necessarily exploit it enough to go on long distance offensives of their own. So by that point for Hitler he's no longer winning but still has the chance of salvaging something from his prior wins while for Stalin he'd manage to stem the tide but unable to completely drive out the nazis.
Well, that's why I said a ceasefire, and not a treaty, as the former is facing the realities on the ground but not wanting to admit anything while the latter being more concrete.The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.
Khrushchev is not a reliable source for what Stalin said in private. He was well known for not allowing the truth to get in the way of telling a good story.
Several people have suggested that Stalin could have arranged a ceasefire with Hitler, but there was approximately zero chance for that. Hitler was not going to give up on the aim of his life - a German Lebensraum up to the Urals - when he thought he was winning. Without Lend-Lease he'll be even more convinced.
Well, the point might be that a ceasefire might be brokered when the soviets turned the tide,
The problem is that it took a very long time for Hitler to realize that he wasn't winning and before that he's unlikely to agree to any conditions that are acceptable to Stalin.
I think that Hitler would have accepted that. The keys behind his ideology were the drive for German autarky and living space,and the elimination of impure groups. If that much land and that many natural resources were taken, I think he would agree to a ceasefire, even if he had no intention of honoring it long term (nor would Stalin, for that matter).I agree that Hitler would have not agreed to a ceasefire without gaining much of the European portion of the USSR. Exactly what boundary would be sufficient for him... not sure it would be the Urals. Germany would be akin to a panther that had killed an elephant --- there is only so much it can consume.
IF, due to lack of Lend Lease, the 1942 German Summer Offensive (Case Blue) had been successful, would Hitler have been satisfied with securing a line running north from the Caspian Sea along the Volga up to and including Stalingrad, then north along the Don....ending at Finland east of and including Leningrad? (Which would have been roughly the stop line of German forces had Case Blue been a success.) Plus tribute in gold, of course.
Well short of the Urals, but it would include all of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Leningrad, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and western European Russia. This would deny Soviet access to both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea while gaining Germany the oil of Baku and the grain of the "breadbasket of Europe" (Ukraine & SW Russia).
And free up the German war machine to deal with the UK and USA, which would have entered the war a year earlier.
I think that Hitler would have accepted that. The keys behind his ideology were the drive for German autarky and living space,and the elimination of impure groups. If that much land and that many natural resources were taken, I think he would agree to a ceasefire, even if he had no intention of honoring it long term (nor would Stalin, for that matter).
But the drive to put a physical extinction to Bolshevism might be the big issue with this. While its doubtful the idea of a German state up to the Urals was a red line for the Nazis, the continuing existence of Bolshevism, which they associated with international Jewry, might be an issue.
Which ultimately meant nothing considering how rapidly the Soviets regained said territory following Op. Citadel and Kursk within a year and a half. And your link doesn't exactly lead to anything relevant AFAIK? And as for your rest; proof?
Again, this doesn't mean a sudden and utter collapse of the Soviet Union when the Germans were both: A) On the defensive already, and B) Overstretched and undermanned. At that point the Soviet Union would've maybe lost another few dozen or hundred of kilometers of land, but ultimately means nothing when the Soviet Union counters the Germans. In the end, inevitably, the Germans cannot conquer the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union won't magically collapse when it still has a fighting chance against the Germans.
Poland and the other eastern European countries are liberated by the West except the Baltic States, but at a cost-either half a million more killed in the Holocaust or a nuked Germany, and a Russia who hates the West even more then in OTL, with some justification.
Again, this doesn't mean a sudden and utter collapse of the Soviet Union when the Germans were both: A) On the defensive already, and B) Overstretched and undermanned. At that point the Soviet Union would've maybe lost another few dozen or hundred of kilometers of land, but ultimately means nothing when the Soviet Union counters the Germans. In the end, inevitably, the Germans cannot conquer the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union won't magically collapse when it still has a fighting chance against the Germans.
Seriously, considering the rate of the Holocaust the Nazis easily could have killed another half a million before July 1945. And there was more WW2 deaths than just the Holocaust.